


Ten Words, Ten Prompts

by LegendaryBard



Category: Original Work, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Gore, Non-OC characters are either mentioned or given a minor role, Trauma, this is really just self-indulgent garbage for the sake of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 11:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13973841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendaryBard/pseuds/LegendaryBard
Summary: Some vignettes for an OC of mine. This is entirely self-indulgent.





	Ten Words, Ten Prompts

ACCOUNT 

His account of the incident is fragmented.

First response team. Switzerland. Loaded up in riot gear.

No one knows what’s going on. They don’t know if there’s more bombs. They don’t know if anyone is left alive in the rubble. Omnics and humans rush into the collapsing complexes, trying to drag out survivors or, if worst comes to worst, bodies.

An old man dies of his wounds in Ashton’s arms.

He doesn’t even have a second to process the shock. Another soldier is screaming for a medic. She’s bleeding from the temple. The soldier is carrying a woman in her arms, and she has a mangled, twisted leg, so badly broken it’s beyond any kind of repair. It looks like raw hamburger, ground and bloodied, with the glint of razor-sharp bone shards forking out every so often. Her femoral artery is most assuredly severed. She needs immediate attention.

The old man is still warm and Ashton moves away from the corpse in a detached sense of shock. He’s bounced from bloodied body to bloodied body- some so badly hurt trying to save them is futile. Some have been crushed. Others, burned. Still others, bruised and cut. He’s watched the stream of bodies carried past him, with heads smashed like a dropped watermelon or burned into contorted, blackened creatures.

He’s naive. A rookie. Really, he shouldn’t be here. But he was closest. One of the first on the scene.

They offer crisis counseling. He goes, but what he sees in the ashes of Zurich will haunt him for the rest of his life.

 

PARADE 

When he’s a little boy, his mother takes him to a parade. It celebrates Overwatch, although it is small, local. There are a scattering of representatives from the organization- pretty young men and women and stern-faced adults with stress creases. There are banners of Strike-Commander Morrison’s face, confetti thrown and joyous band music, outlined against the bright blue sky. He rides on his mother’s shoulders for some of it, so he can see.

He wants to be one of those in uniform. Wants that blue and white armor and celebrations in his honor.

His father complains of their corruption at dinner. That no son and daughter of his was going to join Overwatch. He talks of the _pretty boy_ leader, limp-prick Morrison, a mouthpiece for the UN. Half of his rant goes over Ashton’s head.

That’s the only Overwatch parade Ashton ever gets to see. Dad forces him to stay inside the next year, and the year after that, they move far away.

 

WINE 

“You seem like a wine man,” Eros says, offering a smile. He pours Ashton a glass.

“I don’t drink,” Ashton says.

“You’re going to want to,” Eros says. “Heard about all that shit in Switzerland. Can’t even _imagine_ what you saw. I’m sorry.”

Ashton sags slightly in his chair, sighing through his nose. He takes the glass. Raises it to his lips- then hesitates, nose wrinkling at the smell.

“Go on. It’s not gonna bite.” Eros coaxes.

Ashton takes a sip, tries not to grimace.

“Yeah, whole glass,” Eros says. “You’re gonna want to. We’re gonna have a talk about Dad.”

A sudden atmosphere of meanness overtakes the empty house- Ashton feels nervous, with his own sibling. Eros has undergone a _change_ since he’s been gone. Christ, Ashton hasn’t seen him since he was _fifteen._ He’s… Developed. Physically and mentally, and Ashton’s not sure that the latter is for the better.

“What about Dad?” Ashton asks, warily.

“He’s dead,” Eros says, and Ashton swallows down a bitter lump in his throat. He had known this, all along. And he can’t say that their father will be missed.

“You killed him?” Ashton asks.

There’s a conformational nod. “With a baseball bat. Bashed his brains in.”

Ashton exhales, shakily, and takes another sip of his wine.

 

COUNCIL 

“Not to be a Debbie Downer, but trying to cling to the dregs of Overwatch is kind of sad.” Eros says.

“I’ve heard this one before,” Ashton responds, flatly. He wraps a few tight strips of gauze around the bleeding form of a girl- She’s young, Ashton doesn’t know her well, but she was strong and fierce in battle, despite her small, slender stature. Her external wounds are okay- nonlethal- but he’s worried about cerebral hemorrhaging and a possible spinal injury. She took a knock to the head that really needs the attention of Doctor Ziegler, not him. But while he’s waiting on evac, he needs to treat what he _can_ treat.

He’s really hating how much practice he has in field surgery these days.

Eros suddenly scowls- taps his comm, where someone’s trying to undoubtedly get his attention. “I’m killin’ people, here! Not a good time to talk!”

He takes his hand away from his ear. “Can you make a sound like you’re being killed?”

Ashton shoots him a withering glare. Eros grins.

“This is _serious,”_ Ashton objects. “This woman is severely injured-”

“She’s unconscious, she can’t make a sound like she’s being murdered. Just scream.”

“Shut the hell _up,_ Eros,” Ashton snaps, testily.

“Curse words! Damn.” He whistles. “I’ll give it up, fine. But I’m just saying that Overwatch is a relic. Talon’s not so bad.”

“You kill people!”

“And you don’t?” Eros scoffs.

“I’m a _medic,_ it is legitimately my _job_ to- oh, _forget it.”_

“See, I get that! And in Talon, as a medic, you won’t be killing people, you’ll be saving people.” Eros reasons.

“Saving _terrorists.”_ He responds, acidly. _“Forget it.”_

He swivels his head away from his patient and his irritating brother- taps his own comm. “Agent… Agent Song is down. She’s taken a blow to the back of the head, lost consciousness, possible spinal injury, I can’t carry her out by myself without risk of damage to her spine. She had a gash across her stomach from debris but I’ve stitched it back up. I repeat, Agent Song is down and has a possible neck injury, I need extraction.”

He lowers his hand, does another once-over.

Eros kneels down, squints at her. “She looks pretty dead to me.”

“She’s not.”

“Well, if she’s not, why don’t you just leave her here for the extraction? You could come wi-i-ith me.”

“Somehow I really doubt your Talon buddies would want me tagging along.” Ashton’s voice is tart.

“Are you kidding me? For some reason we have, like, _one_ fucking doctor, and she’s a sadistic piece of shit.” Eros clasps his hands together. “Just _think_ about it?”

Ashton scowls at him.

“You’d better get lost before my team picks me up. They’ll shoot you.”

Eros gets out of his crouch and raises his hands, care-free, and shrugs, with a grin on his face.

“I’ll see you next battle.”

 

MATURE 

Maturity isn’t the same as being an adult.

That’s the first thing that Ashton learned, as a fresh-eyed seventeen year old at his first base posting. Because adults can be _silly._ Like the time that woman, Oxton- the Girl of out of Time- went around putting googly eyes on everything to raise the spirits of everyone after a brutal fight with Null Sector.

Commander Reyes declared an unofficial casual day, and Overwatch agents went wild- ran around in nothing but their underwear, wore elaborate costumes, superhero clothes, over-the-top ‘80s gear, morphsuits, painted their bodies a multitude of colors. Commander Morrison decried the whole incident as a break-down of professionalism and authority, but under his Strike-Commander coat he was wearing a full-body Captain America uniform.

A live zebra gets released on the base and is promptly captured and returned to the zoo it was sprung from- a distillery is found in the depths of the base and dismantled and let off with just a warning.

Ashton knows all of this is undoubtedly _corruption,_ that this is not the way a military base should operate, and that letting all of this knowledge leak to world governments would destroy Overwatch’s credibility-

But he wears a ridiculous costume, he smiles at the googly-eyes, he helps chase down the zebra, and he privately laughs about the distillery.

Overwatch may be full of adults, but that doesn’t mean they always have to be mature.

 

GIVE

Giving something up is the _hardest_ thing a person can do.

When he’s dismissed from Overwatch, he gives up his job.

He gives up his hope.

He gives up his home.

And, most frighteningly of all, he gives up his comfort. He left home when he was young, too young to know how the world worked, and Overwatch was a cushy environment of regulations, companionship, and schedules. He is _afraid_ of what awaits him- a tumultuous world hostile to Overwatch agents, full of life’s problems- college, debt, taxes, the _unknown._

The last thing he does is _give up._ He fights tooth-and-nail with other agents to stay- but gives it up. Collects his things and leaves, wondering what on _Earth_ he could possibly do now.

 

BROWN 

In a moment of private lucidity he thinks to himself- _the reason that blood turns brown when it dries is because iron atoms in the blood become slowly oxidized, just like rust._

The thought is unbidden, flickering through his mind as he throws himself into a roll and lunges to his feet, metal-booted footsteps clashing against the cool hallway floor.

The Reaper dissolves into some kind of sentient cloud- it races at him faster than a human ever could, and he is outpaced. The Reaper pools into a pillar and solidifies into the form of a man in front of him, tall and imposing, and a shotgun burst explodes Ashton’s ears.

He drops to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut, gasping senselessly against the pain- blood sluices from the gaping wound in his stomach, every pellet _burning_ in his abdomen. The pain is _unreal,_ intermingling with the shaky adrenaline and nauseating fear.

“Weak,” Is the Reaper’s only remark- and then he moves on, to his next victim.

Ashton watches blood gush from his stomach with detached shock, and he realizes that if he doesn’t get help, this entire hallway is going to be painted brown. He doesn’t have any supplies, no stitches no needle no _bandages_ no _nothing-_

He cries out for help- or maybe it’s just a wail of pain that he can’t keep down anymore- and the last thing he sees before he loses consciousness is the form of a Valkyrie suit, the gentle voice of a woman, and a golden light and _warmth…_

And then he’s gone.

 

CHEST 

The first time he puts on his uniform is a little terrifying.

He’s never worn anything so heavy. He’s used to soft tennis shoes and light clothes- short-sleeves and things like that. His coat collar zips up to the throat, parts at his waist and drapes to his ankles at its furthest. The boots are heavy, metal, and he clomps along awkwardly while he tries to adjust to the alloy’s heft. The knee guards are a little cumbersome, but don’t hurt his flexibility too much.

The armor on his wrists is impractical, he thinks, but he puts it on anyway. There’s one piece of thigh-armor, a heavy plate that throws his balance off. The belt goes on easily enough, two holsters attached already. The idea of filling them makes him slightly nauseated.

The hardest part is the chestplate. It’s a big, heavy piece, with straps, painted blue with a red cross in the center ( _depending on who you are, it’s a sign of salvation. To others, it’s a perfect target )_ and solid when he raps his knuckles against it. He straps it on and takes a few heavy breaths- anxiety bursts and he claws at the straps and throws it off.

He knows it’s a panic reaction, but he feels like it’s too heavy, like he can’t _breathe._ He keeps the thing on the bed, exhaling shakily, pacing the length of his tiny quarters.

He spends almost fifteen minutes getting used to the rest of the armor, and he puts it on again. Takes slow, steadying breaths. If Eros can deal with binding his chest, Ashton can deal with a little weight and tightness.

He walks around- jogs back and forth- and adjusts.

Despite the new heaviness, he feels like there’s a weight that’s been taken off. This armor means exactly what he thinks it does: He is an Overwatch hero now.

And that’s worth a little discomfort.

 

COMMEMORATE 

He receives a commemoration for his service after the Zurich explosion.

It’s grim and hollow. Lifeless. The Strike-Commander is dead. Commander Reyes is dead. Countless thousands more. There’s hardly anyone in Overwatch even left to honor the first responders, the survivors, for their bravery and service.

They get some plaque at a memorial site. _Ashton Heart_ is one name of thousands of people who saved lives, who cared for the injured, who saved the damaged. There’s one adjacent listing those who were hurt or killed in the attack.

Omnics, humans, and animals alike are all honored.

The dead are honored. Commended for their service and mourned for their sacrifice.

All this loss of life makes Ashton wonder why, when he looks at his tiny name carved into blackened marble, surrounded by all the others, he doesn’t feel anything.

 

VIGOROUS 

The new birth of Overwatch is _vigorous._ Agents, young and old, from Overwatch or new recruits, rush around a previously abandoned base. They set up beds, they animatedly talk to one another, they prepare meals and set up a watch shift during the day and at night. A derelict, out-of-the-way post, left to decay by those who had forced Overwatch out, has new life breathed into it.

The transformation happens quickly, energetically. Ashton and a few other doctors get patient information straightened out. The whole mood is light-hearted but strong, thriving under the weight of self-determination and the resolution to do good. It’s honestly everything Ashton could’ve ever hoped for in an Overwatch renaissance.

And, for the first time since he left the crumbling organization, Ashton feels _hope._

 


End file.
